Agree.

True Image 2018 installed and ready; NAS is in my wishlist (RAID 1).

 

.

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 23, 2018

I would add different HDs for daily, weekly, and monthly backup. That can be a lifesaver if files got corrupted, and were backed up corrupt.
I had this once on the daily and weekly backup, but got aware of the corruption and rescued the files from the monthly backup. The original corruption occured on the source SSD. Of course some of the files were older versions, but at least existing.

To summarize this: For backup of important data you should have in order of importance:
1 - one physically three-stage backup on HD daily/weekly/monthly on the location where you mainly work
2 - one physically and up-to-date-backup on HD that is always with you when you travel.
3 - one physically backup on HD that is in a different place and updated as often as possible.
3 - for the paranoid ones (like me) a full backup (say quarterly) of your Production machine's harddisc.
4 - one physically backup on Blu-Ray as often as money and time allows it.
4 - one or more (encrypted) cloud backups if your internet speed and budget allows that.

I would only recommend SSDs as backup media for small amounts of data, and as secondary media, as they are a bit expensive, and, if damaged, nearly unrecoverable.
With NAS as a backup medium, I am not very happy. My experience may be somwhere outdated, but cheap NAS's are not very reliable, their speed is not great, and they may have filesystem limitations. All under the light of the backup task. If I would want to backup on my internal network, I would install a simple and cheap fileserver-only PC with several HD's, maybe in RAID mode. That thing only needs to run when needed.
Cloud backup is a modern concept of uploading your files (as if the old ftp were not nearly the same thing). I feel not completely convinced about it, since I consider all internet related services as unreliable, and, more importantly, not persistent. The possibility of seeing some "Sorry, we're closed" message instead of the usually login page, is (at least for me) a bit high. So i ranked that method low.

Another important point is the backup mode. Most freeware solutions (Like SyncBackPro Free,which I use) allow only Backup without keeping a version history. If you want to keep all past versions of a song, you have either always to name that song differently while saving it, or use a Pro Backup to keep the history (which can be very space consuming).

 

Since everybody is pushing the "backup" narrative,
I would like to point out that there are people like me, Who gave it great thought but decided consciously not to backup everything.

I try too give +- 3 months of data retention, that is the actual size of my ssd (at this recording rate it is)
It is mirrored too a traditional hdd, but remember. That doesn't count as a backup. ( in a case of software failure I have the chance to "mirror" corrupt files)

music that is going nowhere in 3 months usually does not get used again. That's why I don't guarantee its existence after that. It isn't worth the hassle.

If a artist/client do require it to be available for longer I usually print some stems togheter and put it on their stick/phone or send it tru wetransfer with the instruction to download it at home. Which is actually the safest option for me, putting the responsibility in their own hands

 

in-house NAS > no-idea-where Cloud
something like Synology DS918+ is best deal nowadays (equipped with let's say four 4TB drives, btw only capacity where Seagate is as good as WD), takes literally minutes to completely set up and go, even for non-geeky user
edit: obviously best backup is mix of multiple ways at multiple locations

 

Last edited: May 10, 2018

Not true at all. I have published songs that were five years in the making - sometimes I write the main part, lose inspiration, and come back to it years later to finish it. They are some of my best songs. And three months isn't a lot at all when you lead a busy life and don't have a lot of time to work on writing.

 

sorry, was talking about my own situation. I agree that backups are a good idea in your situation.
before the music gets to me there might be years of work in it

well... I think it isn't necessarily a good thing,
I think it's in the perspective of what your job is in the music you make.

 

This thread needs modifying it should be
PLEASE Always make a Backup of anything that is important and you can not afford to lose.